If you’re working on growing your business’s online presence, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google that helps you evaluate your website traffic and assess the effectiveness of your online presence. While Google Analytics can be very helpful in understanding how your website is performing, there are a lot of factors and metrics, and it can be overwhelming.
Our team at AudiologyPlus has put together this simple guide so you can understand what your analytics mean and how your website is performing. Here are the main categories you’ll see on each of your monthly SEO reports:
- Overall Website Traffic – This graph shows how many sessions occurred on your website during the selected period of time. A session is counted each time a visitor lands on your website—no matter how they come to your website. Sessions are counted the same whether the person is a new or repeat visitor. While website traffic tends to have peaks and dips over time, the goal is to see an overall increase in traffic.
- New Users – This metric tracks how many new users visited your website during a certain period of time. New users are first-time website visitors from any channel. You want a steady, increasing number of new users finding your website, because this means that more and more new people are discovering your practice.
- Most Frequently Viewed Pages – We often call this “What your visitors are looking at.” The list of most frequently viewed pages notes how many times the most popular pages on your website were viewed during a period of time. Evaluating your most frequently viewed pages can help you understand what most visitors are looking for when they visit your website, such as your contact information, your staff page, or information about your services. We also note how many pages the average website visitor views (more is better because they are looking at more information about your practice) and how long they spend on that page (again, longer is better because longer page views means visitors are reading through your content).
- Traffic Channels – This tracks how people find your website, or where your website traffic comes from. Our goal is to have Organic Traffic as the greatest channel to your website; Organic Traffic includes visitors who find your website through search engines like Google and Bing. Direct Traffic visitors come to your website by either typing in your website address or clicking on a link sent to them by a friend. Social Traffic tracks how many visitors came to your website from social networks, while Referral Traffic consists of traffic from other websites, such as Yellow Pages or Healthgrades.
- Organic Traffic Trend – Organic Traffic is typically our greatest focus in our SEO strategy; we want new website visitors to find your website through “natural” methods like searches on Google and Bing. The Organic Traffic Trend shows you how many users come to your website through Organic Traffic over a period of type. Again, you will likely see peaks and dips over time, but our goal is to see an overall increase in Organic Traffic.
We hope this guide helps you better understand your Google Analytics reports and how your website is performing. If you need further assistance in understanding your reports, or if you want to learn how you can boost your website’s performance, feel free to contact us today.
